I have had many ebbs and flows in terms of post frequency (as I would imagine many amateur bloggers do) but recently made a concerted effort to post more, despite spending most of my life on the road for work.

Well, about three days ago, I put up a post about Clifford Stoll’s 1995 predictions about the internet. Since then (with many thanks to BoingBoing and others) this little corner of the web has received over 28,000 hits, and I have had the opportunity to debate technology prognostication (via snarky comments) with people all over the world.

In my mind, this marked a turning point – I’ve finally made it! Now…it’s time to regress to the lowbrow humor from whence I came! With that in mind, I submit the following story.

During recent Passovers, certain family members of mine have taken to purchasing finger puppets that commemorate the plagues in Biblical Egypt (ed. note – only Jews would commemorate plagues). These have been the source of much ridicule from every other member of my family.

Well, today, my cousin Brett sent me the following:

It looks like these monstrosities have been updated and are even creepier (which is worse, the sad dying firstborn son, or the river of blood with the tummy ache?)

Upon seeing this picture, we remarked that “Let my fingers go!” sounds more like a porn title than a cry from Moses. This, of course, led me to think that since Jews lead the league in sarcasm, someone must have put together a list of Jewish porn titles. Alas, Funny or Die did not let me down:

1. Hannah Does Her Blintzes
2. Chupah Schtuppah
3. You Don’t Have To Be Jewish To Enjoy Kosher Sausage
4. The Moel Always Cuts Twice
5. Barry Porter And The Chamber Of Shiksas
6. The Goy Who Came At Dinner
7. My Son The Boob Doctor
8. Mishegas At The Mikveh
9. Reformed Jews Do
10. What Happens In Janet Goldman, Stays In Janet Goldman
11. Smoked Brisket
12. Tzimmes And Sodomy
13. The Last Tempation Of Rabbi Cohen
14. Bar Mitzvah Ballin’
15. The Secret Sex Lives Of Kosher Caterers
16. The Man Who Loved Smoked Salmon … We Mean Really Loved Smoked Salmon
17. Deep Insider Eugene Levy
18. The Kosher Butcher’s Wife
19. Tongue For Lunch, Matzoh Balls For Dessert
20. Orthodox Maneuvers

I struggle to top 10 and 20, among others (poor Janet Goldman). In light of the larger reader base now available, I was hoping we could come up with some other good ones in the comments. Depending on the submissions, I would be willing to send some of these very finger puppets to the winner.

Blaspheme away!

One of the questions that metaphysics examines is the nature of time. Wired Magazine currently has an interview with Sean Carroll, a theoretical physicist at CalTech who has attempted to understand the physics of time.

But the particular aspect of time that I’m interested in is the arrow of time: the fact that the past is different from the future. We remember the past but we don’t remember the future. There are irreversible processes. There are things that happen, like you turn an egg into an omelet, but you can’t turn an omelet into an egg.

And we sort of understand that half way. The arrow of time is based on ideas that go back to Ludwig Boltzmann, an Austrian physicist in the 1870s. He figured out this thing called entropy. Entropy is just a measure of how disorderly things are. And it tends to grow. That’s the second law of thermodynamics: Entropy goes up with time, things become more disorderly. So, if you neatly stack papers on your desk, and you walk away, you’re not surprised they turn into a mess. You’d be very surprised if a mess turned into neatly stacked papers. That’s entropy and the arrow of time. Entropy goes up as it becomes messier.

So, Boltzmann understood that and he explained how entropy is related to the arrow of time. But there’s a missing piece to his explanation, which is, why was the entropy ever low to begin with? Why were the papers neatly stacked in the universe? Basically, our observable universe begins around 13.7 billion years ago in a state of exquisite order, exquisitely low entropy. It’s like the universe is a wind-up toy that has been sort of puttering along for the last 13.7 billion years and will eventually wind down to nothing. But why was it ever wound up in the first place? Why was it in such a weird low entropy unusual state?

This is one of the best overviews of the topic that I’ve seen, especially for the non-philosophers sane people of the world.

Worth a read if you want your brain to get a workout/squeezing.

BONUS! – many blog posts have discussed the anthropological wonder that is Google’s suggest. Whenever you start typing in a search, you can see all kinds of funny suggestions (here is a whole website devoted to the best ones).

While putting together this post, I saw the following. It looks like at number 7, the average Googler goes from intrepid scientist to hopeless romantic.

Just came across this article from Newsweek in 1995. It lists all the reasons the internet will fail. My two favorite parts:

The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.

…

Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we’ll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet. Uh, sure.

If Newsweek is as good at maintaining the journalism industry as they are at fortune telling, they should be around for a long time.

The Internet? Bah!

Hype alert: Why cyberspace isn’t, and will never be, nirvana

After two decades online, I’m perplexed. It’s not that I haven’t had a gas of a good time on the Internet. I’ve met great people and even caught a hacker or two. But today, I’m uneasy about this most trendy and oversold community. Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic.

Baloney. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.

Consider today’s online world. The Usenet, a worldwide bulletin board, allows anyone to post messages across the nation. Your word gets out, leapfrogging editors and publishers. Every voice can be heard cheaply and instantly. The result? Every voice is heard. The cacophany more closely resembles citizens band radio, complete with handles, harrasment, and anonymous threats. When most everyone shouts, few listen. How about electronic publishing? Try reading a book on disc. At best, it’s an unpleasant chore: the myopic glow of a clunky computer replaces the friendly pages of a book. And you can’t tote that laptop to the beach. Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we’ll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet. Uh, sure.

What the Internet hucksters won’t tell you is tht the Internet is one big ocean of unedited data, without any pretense of completeness. Lacking editors, reviewers or critics, the Internet has become a wasteland of unfiltered data. You don’t know what to ignore and what’s worth reading. Logged onto the World Wide Web, I hunt for the date of the Battle of Trafalgar. Hundreds of files show up, and it takes 15 minutes to unravel them–one’s a biography written by an eighth grader, the second is a computer game that doesn’t work and the third is an image of a London monument. None answers my question, and my search is periodically interrupted by messages like, “Too many connectios, try again later.”

Won’t the Internet be useful in governing? Internet addicts clamor for government reports. But when Andy Spano ran for county executive in Westchester County, N.Y., he put every press release and position paper onto a bulletin board. In that affluent county, with plenty of computer companies, how many voters logged in? Fewer than 30. Not a good omen.

Point and click:

Then there are those pushing computers into schools. We’re told that multimedia will make schoolwork easy and fun. Students will happily learn from animated characters while taught by expertly tailored software.Who needs teachers when you’ve got computer-aided education? Bah. These expensive toys are difficult to use in classrooms and require extensive teacher training. Sure, kids love videogames–but think of your own experience: can you recall even one educational filmstrip of decades past? I’ll bet you remember the two or three great teachers who made a difference in your life.

Then there’s cyberbusiness. We’re promised instant catalog shopping–just point and click for great deals. We’ll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obselete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet–which there isn’t–the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople.

What’s missing from this electronic wonderland? Human contact. Discount the fawning techno-burble about virtual communities. Computers and networks isolate us from one another. A network chat line is a limp substitute for meeting friends over coffee. No interactive multimedia display comes close to the excitement of a live concert. And who’d prefer cybersex to the real thing? While the Internet beckons brightly, seductively flashing an icon of knowledge-as-power, this nonplace lures us to surrender our time on earth. A poor substitute it is, this virtual reality where frustration is legion and where–in the holy names of Education and Progress–important aspects of human interactions are relentlessly devalued.

STOLL is the author of “Silicon Snake Oil–Second Thoughts on the Information Highway” to be published by Doubleday in April.

I was hesitant to even post about this because it besmirches the good name of Astoria…but it’s hilarious. Throughout the Ditmars area, there is an elevated bridge for the Amtrak train. The gigantic support structures form an arch and people typically paint the undersides.

At one of the intersections, there’s a leaky scum pipe that causes a 50ft patch of nasty ice in the winter. Two Astorians dubbed this “Scum River”, and like any children of the 80’s, attempted to ford the river.

They constructed a bridge with recycled materials and put it up shortly thereafter, even getting a commendation from City Councilman Peter Vallone. It’s not too far from my house so I’ll have to see if it’s still up this weekend. While it sucks that we have an iceberg made out of waste, I think this speaks to the broader creativity and civic engagement of Astorians.

Thanks to Lauren-Philly for the article!

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The series, which can be found here, is enlightening as much for what the camera shows as what the leaders are trying to convey (my favorite is on the 2nd row, third from the right – Conan’s doppelgänger).

Never one to be outdone, the NY Times “commissioned” a series of its own – the heads of all 44 U.S. presidents. These portraits lack only one small detail…a face.

Hair is a language; it announces our gender, class and even our politics. George Washington rejected wigs as too aristocratic for the new Republic. He tied his long powdered hair in a “queue,” while his successors embraced unpowdered styles inspired by ancient Rome. Federalists like John Adams wore long hair, while Jefferson’s Democrats countered with shortened cuts. By the mid-19th century, beards returned after a long absence. Virile-looking and practical on the battlefield, beards were suited to the Civil War; Grant kept his when he entered the White House. The safety razor’s invention around 1900 marked the beginning of the end for presidential facial hair. For the last 100 years, there have been very few stylistic developments of note; the most significant change of late comes with our current commander-in-chief, whose hair has brought welcome diversity to the presidential scalp.

—PENNY HOWELL JOLLY, a professor of art history at Skidmore College and the author of “Hair: Untangling a Social History”

These are interesting to look at, and it’s funny how easy it is to recognize the presidents (the fact that they are in order notwithstanding).

Any thoughts on a favorite? Mine is probably TR, because A) it’s tough to look that badass without a face, and B) it resembles my one of my favorite fictional politicians. That said, given current demographic trends, I can only assume that whomever is president in 2024 will look like this.

His YouTube channel can be found here (user name ARakandJRod). Here is my favorite clip:

(Also, I am alive, will one day be home from Chicago, and slept through a 4.5 earthquake two days ago)

I didn’t get too much of a feel for the city, but we had a great view and some good food (Moon Palace Chinese, and an excellent but name-escaping Thai place).

View from my hotel (Lake on the left)

Chicago from above

We are launching a new health care company with a hospital system in Chicago so I’m sure I’ll be back again and have more time to explore.

Having traveled a decent amount in the last five years, I always find it interesting how comforting the idea of “home” can be. When you travel, you rush to the airport, and within a few hours can be halfway across the country. It gives you such an appreciation of how big the country (and world is). Even so, people take comfort in the idea that somewhere, there is a small patch of land with a building on it, filled with all your stuff.

The weather in Chicago (especially earlier in the week) was freezing, so it was nice coming home to NY at 45 degrees and a crazy sunset. This is what I saw when I stepped outside (Note: Reality was not this blurry…I was dodging oncoming cars):

After sleeping 13 hours last night, I’m looking forward to just relaxing this weekend. One thing I did get to do today was watch Conan’s goodbye speech. It was pure class. I hope he gets another gig soon.

Women, however, are another story. Before using the bathroom, my girlfriend often turns on the sink and shower while blasting Pavarotti. The only way to block out more noise would be to form a black hole somewhere near the hand towels.

Leave it to Japan, then, to solve a problem that no man has. Enter the Pee Without Noise Stool!

This one-of-a-kind product eliminates the “sit or stand” debate by presenting an awkward middle option – the halfway kneel. I guess the theory is that by dropping “Godzilla” very close to the water line, there is less distance to travel and thus a quieter splash. Fascinating.

My favorite part of the website is where they actually show this in practice. As you can see, everyone’s urinary tract is a teapot. Standing up causes a big splash, and sitting causes you to aim right and pee on the seat while displaying oddly Hebrew-like characters. Only the Pee Without Stool enables the silent stream. Happy Friday!

The recent earthquake in Haiti has caused untold destruction, magnified by the poor conditions that surround much of Port-au-Prince. Casualty estimates have ranged from 40,000 to as high as 500,000.

The NY Times highlighted a huge surge in cell phone giving – $2 million has been raised via text message as of early this morning.

The easiest way is to text “HAITI” (presumably without quotes) to the number 90999. This will add $10 to your cell phone bill, which is aggregated and sent to the Red Cross. None of the money goes to the phone company, so you don’t have to worry about AT&T using an earthquake to build up their 3G networks.

More information can be found on the White House or Red Cross websites. If you’re reading this and you can spare $10 and a few seconds, it’s definitely worth a donation. Via Consumerist:

• Doctors Without Borders
• Red Cross – you can also text “haiti” to 90999 to automatically donate $10–the service is being offered without surcharges by mGive
• International Rescue Committee
• Yele Haiti (Wyclef Jean’s charity) – text 501501 to automatically donate $5 (the charge will appear on your phone bill)

And if you want something more specific, try looking through this list of relief organizations provided by InterAction.org.

The Associated Press notes that if you want to donate your technical expertise or job skills to the relief effort, visit the Center for International Disaster Information (www.cidi.org) for more information. (Warning: their site is being hammered right now.)

Here is a stirring report on the devastation and how the lack of infrastructure is hampering recovery.

On Twitter, you can follow developments by searching for #Haiti. While doing so, I saw the following:

Pope Benedict activates the Catholic Church’s extensive worldwide charity network to help the victims #Haiti quake – Reuters

This made me wonder…how do you “activate” a charity network? Is this an email, a phone tree, or what? In my mind, Benedict hit a giant red button on the Pope-desk, and missiles full of supplies came shooting out of the Christ the Redeemer statue in Brazil, although that may not be completely accurate.

In any event, donate if you can.